B’Tselem, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Physicians for Human Rights – Israel, and HaMoked petition Israel’s Supreme Court to protect civilians in Rafah:

The petitioning organizations demand that the IDF: allow the unconditional evacuation of the injured from Rafah, even if there is no advanced coordination; allow the unobstructed passage of ambulances and medical equipment between Rafah and the hospitals located outside the city; prevent injury or threat to medical teams and citizens evacuating the injured or corpses; renew the supply of electricity, water, food and medical supplies to the residents of the village of Tel a-Sultan, that has been subject to total closure for more than three days; and allow access to the medical team assembled by PHR-Israel. The petition also asks the court to order the IDF to open an immediate investigation into the shelling of a crowd of citizens yesterday, and to issue an immediate order prohibiting absolutely shooting into civilian gatherings, even if armed individuals are among them.

FAIR asks why Kerry’s “missteps” are a story for the media and Bush’s representations aren’t:

Time magazine’s May 10 story, “What Kerry Meant to Say,” is a typical example of recent Kerry coverage. After noting Kerry’s opportunities to score points against a White House besieged by questions about Iraq, the September 11 commission and the Supreme Court, reporter Karen Tumulty asks, “‘But what did the challenger find himself talking about for three days?’ The answer is whether or not Kerry threw away his medals or his ribbons in the early 1970s.” Tumulty attributes this story line to a personal flaw in Kerry: The campaign has been largely about the “traps that the Bush campaign is adept at setting for Kerry, and the personality trait that makes Kerry walk right into them.” In fact, of course, it’s up to the media to decide what questions to ask candidates and which issues to run stories about. And again and again, the press corps has latched onto stories of dubious importance in order to portray Kerry as faltering or changing course.

My second UnderNews post, an expanded version of this one, is up here. Check the site out.

Yet another demonstration that the Bush White House is crimminal:

The General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, said on Wednesday that the Bush administration had violated federal law by producing and disseminating television news segments that portray the new Medicare law as a boon to the elderly.

The agency said the videos were a form of “covert propaganda” because the government was not identified as the source of the materials, broadcast by at least 40 television stations in 33 markets. The agency also expressed some concern about the content of the videos, but based its ruling on the lack of disclosure.

The Center for Housing Policy reports that while homeownership is rising, it’s falling sharply for working families with children:

The startling conclusion is that homeownership among working families with children is actually lower today than it was in 1978…While the overall homeownership rate declined from 65 to 64 percent between 1978 and 1991, it rebounded sharply, rising to 68 percent by 2001, just shy of the current high. In contrast, the homeownership rate of families with children has never recovered from the losses experienced in the 1980s. In 1978, 70.5 percent of families with children owned their homes. In 2001, the share was 68.4 percent. And, low- to moderate-income working families with children were hit particularly hard. In 1978, 62.5 percent of all such families owned their homes. In 2001, their homeownership rate was just 56.6 percent.

Yale President Richard Levin’s announces a very long overdue public campaign for visa reform:

Yale President Richard Levin has suggested several reforms in how the U.S. government processes visas for international students and scholars, calling the long delays some at Yale have faced “unacceptable.”

“They erode the Yale community’s ability to attract and offer its programs in a timely way to all those who gain admission,” he said. “They can also foster the impression that the United States no longer values international academic exchanges.”

Of course, no Yale news coverage would be complete without the obligatory Yale quote disavowing having in any way been influenced to change policy which affects students by the students themselves:

Yale’s unions have played a key role in rallying students from about 50 universities across the country, to put pressure on Congress and others.

“It’s part of our strategy to make America more hospitable to immigrants,” said Antony Dugdale, a Yale graduate who works as a research analyst for Yale’s unions. Though Yale’s unions believe their attention has spurred the academic community to action, Tom Conroy, a Yale spokesman, said Yale has been working on the problem for some time.

It’s good to see Levin taking a more public stance on this issue, and if he actually lobbies half as hard for visa reform for his graduate students as he’s been lobbying against their right to organize, that’ll be a boon to the movement. But lasting reform still depends on working with the students affected, which this administration, unfortunately, remain loathe to do.

Wal-Mart Watch: Asia Labour News offers a survey of recent stories in the Chinese press shedding light on the company’s miserable labor conditions:

Wal-Mart has been attracting criticism in the Chinese press for some time now, mainly over its refusal to allow the Chinese trade union to organise workers in its stores. However, the last few months have seen the emergence of Wal-Mart stories in the Chinese media focussing on workplace conditions in factories supplying to the US giant.

This turn of events has been the result of Chinese journalists following up the findings released in report by the National Labor Committee in early February. Entitled Toys of Misery 2004, the report was compiled with assistance from China Labour Watch, a well known labour rights organisation in the US.

Conservative when possible, compassionate when forced, and always, always poised to spin:

…in a twist this election season, many administration officials are taking credit for spreading largess through programs that President Bush tried to eliminate or to cut sharply.

For example, Justice Department officials recently announced that they were awarding $47 million to scores of local law enforcement agencies for the hiring of police officers. Mr. Bush had just proposed cutting the budget for the program, known as Community Oriented Policing Services, by 87 percent, to $97 million next year, from $756 million. The administration has been particularly energetic in publicizing health programs, even ones that had been scheduled for cuts or elimination.

From the Village Voice:

The e-mailed meeting summary reveals NSC Near East and North African Affairs director Elliott Abrams sitting down with the Apostolic Congress and massaging their theological concerns. Claiming to be “the Christian Voice in the Nation’s Capital,” the members vociferously oppose the idea of a Palestinian state. They fear an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza might enable just that, and they object on the grounds that all of Old Testament Israel belongs to the Jews. Until Israel is intact and David’s temple rebuilt, they believe, Christ won’t come back to earth. Abrams attempted to assuage their concerns by stating that “the Gaza Strip had no significant Biblical influence such as Joseph’s tomb or Rachel’s tomb and therefore is a piece of land that can be sacrificed for the cause of peace.”

Three weeks after the confab, President George W. Bush reversed long-standing U.S. policy, endorsing Israeli sovereignty over parts of the West Bank in exchange for Israel’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip.

Must have been working for the liberal media:

U.S. forces beat three Iraqis working for Reuters and subjected them to sexual and religious taunts and humiliation during their detention last January in a military camp near Falluja, the three said Tuesday.

The three first told Reuters of the ordeal after their release but only decided to make it public when the U.S. military said there was no evidence they had been abused, and following the exposure of similar mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. An Iraqi journalist working for U.S. network NBC, who was arrested with the Reuters staff, also said he had been beaten and mistreated, NBC said Tuesday.

A year ago, as the Daily Mislead recounts, a Timken Company manufacturing plant was, according to President Bush, a symbol of the potential of his economic growth plan. Now the factory is closing. Prescient, eh?

White House Counsel and presumed Supreme Court-appointee Juan Gonzales, in a private memo, calls international law “quaint”:

By Jan. 25, 2002, according to a memo obtained by NEWSWEEK, it was clear that Bush had already decided that the Geneva Conventions did not apply at all, either to the Taliban or Al Qaeda. In the memo, which was written to Bush by Gonzales, the White House legal counsel told the president that Powell had “requested that you reconsider that decision.” Gonzales then laid out startlingly broad arguments that anticipated any objections to the conduct of U.S. soldiers or CIA interrogators in the future. “As you have said, the war against terrorism is a new kind of war,” Gonzales wrote to Bush. “The nature of the new war places a high premium on other factors, such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians.” Gonzales concluded in stark terms: “In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions.”